


A Different World

by battle_cat, bethagain, Donda, glasscannon, Livia_LeRynn, proprioception (sacrificethemtothesquid)



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Round Robin, wasteland weekend
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-08 15:51:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12257457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/battle_cat/pseuds/battle_cat, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethagain/pseuds/bethagain, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donda/pseuds/Donda, https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasscannon/pseuds/glasscannon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Livia_LeRynn/pseuds/Livia_LeRynn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sacrificethemtothesquid/pseuds/proprioception
Summary: Started with the prompt "Max finds Wasteland City," this is a round robin fic written during our fanfic meetup in the comfort of the Clan of the Boltcutters' shade tent at Wasteland Weekend 2017.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written by Bethagain

Max heard the sound before he saw what made it. It wasn't one of the usual sounds of the desert. The desert was the scurrying of lizards. The scratch of sand across hot metal. The soft beat of wind when the temperature dropped at the end of the day. The desert had a sameness, but the sounds changed and spoke and sighed. This was a steady sound. A low vibration, constant for minutes, then pausing, then starting again. The pitch got higher as Max rolled the Interceptor closer. At the top of a rise, he saw a glow of light from beyond the next few hills.  
  
Keep going? Or turn around and leave the light behind? Max's wrists tensed, starting to spin the wheel.  
  
But Max had lost track of days again. He was starting to forget, to lose the outline of Jessie's face, of Sprog's cries in the early morning hours.  
  
Max was lonely.  
  
He kept the wheels straight.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written by Donda

The light grew and grew, and he kept thinking it couldn't possibly get brighter, but it did. He felt himself inexplicably drawn toward one set of lights, zeroing in like a moth to flame. They were almost blindingly bright flood lights, lighting up the night like day. The closer he got, the louder the sound got as well, and a repetitive thumping started to drown all other sounds out.  
  
It was a stage, he realized as he got closer and slowed his Interceptor to a crawl. Light flooded the area, people moved to the beat both on and off the stage. Max stared. Who were these people, and what, exactly, where they celebrating way out here?  
  
He followed along a scraggly fence, staring at the people on the other side more than where he was going. When he found an opening in the fence, he paused, debating again, but only for a moment, then pressed his foot on the gas, the sound of his engine lost in the noise as he turned and entered the fence.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written by Livia_LeRynn

"Five miles per hour!"  
  
Max raised an eyebrow in response. He restrained an instinct to reach for his shotgun. "Hm?"  
  
"Five miles per hour!" The voice shouted back - a male figure, heavy, bearded, chest draped in ammunition. "Slow the fuck down!"  
  
"Mmm." Max obeyed. Some fights just weren't worth having, but he kept a hand on the wheel and a foot on the gas, hovering at the ready.  
  
Flames shot out into the darkness, and the unwashed masses cheered, throwing their bodies into the air. Max shook his head - ridiculous waste of calories. More crazy fuckers everywhere he went  - damn fool he was for coming here - these were even crazier than most. He found himself staring at one with strangely white teeth - blinding white. The mouth was moving - words indecipherable. Max blinked back the growing white incongruously in a filthy unwashed face.  
  
"Fuck you buddy!" That's what the man had said. Now he was probing Max's shotgun and smiling stupidly.  
  
Max grunted as he pulled away.  
  
"In character - I like it." The man laughed as he tossed a small bit of round metal at Max and walked away. It bounced off his lapels and then landed on his chest, a strange symbol staring up at him. Max bent to retrieve the object. He lifted it, running his fingers over its edges. They were sharp enough to cut - useful.  
  
"My world is fire and blood..." A deep voice grumbled.  
  
Max looked up to see a vaguely familiar shape casting a brooding silhouette against the backdrop.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written by Sacrificethemtothesquid

He didn't really recognize it at first, but after a few long seconds of dumbfounded silence, the truth became unavoidable: his face was up on screen. His current face, in fact, heavily bearded and dark with uncounted days of grime.  
  
He wondered vaguely if he'd been poisoned.  
  
The man at the gate slapped the side of the car. "Keep moving! Don't hold up the fucking line!"


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written by Glasscannon

Max drove away from the strange apparition of his face. His hallucinations went strange places plenty often, but this was new, and better left unexamined.  
  
He drove through the roughly formed streets, paved in places with packed gravel, nothing more than soft sand in other spots. He kept an eye on the unpredictable surface, the other on the camps that lined the sides of the road. It'd been a long time since he last saw this many people in one place, other than the Citadel. The camps were rough, lean-to tarps and half-tumbled tents, patched together trailers and armored cars everywhere he looked. It felt claustrophobic, closed in, the sheer display of humanity putting him on edge.  
  
Max came to an intersection, a tilted road sign declaring it Seven Sisters Blvd. He wasn't sure the last time he'd seen a road sign, but it seemed to lead to the edge of the giant encampment, and being away from all of this seemed like the best option.  
  
The edge of the open desert was looming ahead at him when a familiar symbol by the side of the road caught his eye. It was a bolt cutter circled by a clipped open chain. He knew the symbol, had scratched it onto a surface a time or two himself, but he hadn't expected to see it here of all places. The interceptor's headlights swept across the signs that lined the road at the foot of the symbol - "The Many Mothers welcome you. Come in peace or leave in pieces." and "870 days since the REVolution" - and he slowed the car to a stop, unable to deny any longer that this must be them, the Clan of the Boltcutters from the New Citadel.  
  
There was a fire burning in a barrel at the front of the camp, casting the figures in the tent behind it in shadow, but they turned toward him when he stepped out of the car.  
  
"Max?" a familiar voice called. "What are you doing here?"


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written by Donda and glasscannon

“…What is this? What are you doing here?”  
  
“It’s the gathering of the clans,” the voice responded as the person approached.  
  
Max searched to put a name to the face approaching him, but was a little ashamed that it wasn’t coming to him. She was one of the many new Vuvalini who had come in to the Citadel more recently, called back by Furiosa and the Mothers who survived the Fury Road.  
  
Her answer didn’t tell him a lot. “What’s that?”  
  
She sighed, a little exasperated, but still with a warm smile on her face. “Once a year, tribes from around the wasteland gather here to celebrate, trade, and make connections with other tribes. The New Citadel sends a small delegation as well.” She motioned to the camp and the people behind her, who were starting to get up and approach Max as well. “If you showed up to Small Council meetings now and then, you’d know about these things.”  
  
Max huffed a little. He had a knack for slipping out of going to the council meetings, but apparently it was starting to get noticed. It just wasn’t his place, he felt. He helped the New Citadel in his own way, but he always thought that running it was best left to other people.  
  
“Well, as long as you’re here,” a male voice spoke up from the gathering group behind the Vuvalini, “you might as well enjoy yourself. The races are starting soon. Why don’t you come with us?”  
  
“Races?” Max was still unsure about going back into that mess of people.  
  
“You’ll see.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter by battle_cat

The road was full of people, noisy with the sounds of celebration and the occasional rev of an engine that seemed to be mostly for show. Max kept a hand on his shotgun. The Citadel delegation had enough rifles between them to be plenty imposing, but you never knew with a crowd like this.

As they turned a dusty corner Max heard yelling and cheering louder than anything else around them. The noise came from a crowd clustered around a brightly lit platform up ahead of them. As they got closer, Max could hear a strange rumbling, rattling noise under the whoop of the crowd, something that didn’t sound like a bike or any engine he could place.

A man in an elaborate hat paced and shuffled across the raised platform, calling out words that to Max made very little sense:

“And it’s Cock-a-Doodle Do Me in the lead, Cock-a-Doodle Do Me with Dildo Bangins and Adolf Clitler nose to nose behind…and here comes Night Rider on the outside, Night Rider edging up…and look at that! A last-minute burst of speed by Tickle Riiiiiiick—”

The crowd roared louder and louder. Max followed the Citadel delegation, worming their way up to the front, until he could finally see the source of all the excitement. It was a piece of corrugated metal, angled downward from the stage to the sand below. Rattling and shaking away on the metal were a half-dozen elongated bullet-shaped objects that could only be—

“What _are_ those?” one of the younger members of the delegation asked.

“Oh lordy.” A couple of the older women behind Max were cackling.

“But the batteries—” someone wondered aloud. _“How?”_

“Mothers, I’d trade my right arm for a pack of working double-As.”

“And if you traded your right arm how would you—”

“Sweetie, you know I can shoot with both hands—”

“Fuck the batteries, find me the world’s last Hitachi and I’ll be ridin’ eternal—”

“But I don’t understand…” a poor confused soul was still protesting. “What are they _for?”_

The crowd suddenly exploded in a roar of stomping and cheering. “And it’s Dildo Bangins! Dildo Bangins scoooooooores!”

The man in the hat and his mates were lining up more…competitors…for the next race, while members of the crowd rushed to place bets and take swigs from guzz-smelling flasks before the cheering began anew.

Max had the feeling this was only the beginning of a long, strange night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All race competitor names courtesy of Hog Camp.


End file.
